I have tried a few of the different methods now and they all work well. My latest attempt I was able to get straight lines for the sides and a very nice carve on the top. However, some of my lines were not precise enough and I ended up with a few gaps. Hopefully I will have some time tonight to have another go at it.

What rendering program are you using? I have been using Bryce 7 but think I may need to try out some other renderers.

Hi Ug,
Here is another take on Michaels original method... I find it helps me when I am visualizing from a surface.. It is done by creating a plane with the proper amount of points, then moving the points around... So I just drew a square, with 8 equal points per side, then ran network on the lines. This makes a plane with a grid of points I can move as if they were lines.. I can form them to the curve of the body in some areas to help me shape the bulge. I then cut off the harder curves with a boolean operation. This is the same as the lofting of the lines, then manipulating the lines to update the surface.

Hi ugo

> What rendering program are you using?

Simlab Composer.

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Here is how I have been going after it in my latest tests. I am creating individual segments for each section and then using the network command to build the sections. As I said some of my line/curve ends may be off as I am getting some gaps between segments as shown below. Once I can get the sections put together without gaps then I should be able to slice an extruded outline of the body nicely. The flat outer portions of this piece extend beyond the bounds of the body of the guitar so I get nice flat edges on the sides of the extruded guitar body.



Danny, I will have to give Simlab Composer a try. The price seems reasonable for me.

Hi ugotaccpaced,

> as I am getting some gaps between segments
> as shown below.

What you see in that screenshot there is actually not necessarily a true gap - that is just a display artifact.

Video cards don't know how to display surface objects directly, video cards are focused on displaying triangles. So the shaded surface that you see actually comes from a set of triangles that are created from the surface. Sometimes if too few triangles were created in a particular area it may leave a kind of rough appearance to the object where you see some evidence of the triangulation - that's what's happening in that spot.

That can happen anytime you have 2 surfaces that touch each other but are not joined together, because in that case each surface can get meshed with a slightly different structure and the triangles may not align where the surfaces happen to touch. If you join the surfaces together with the Join command, then the display mesh will have a unified structure in those areas and you won't see that kind of artifact anymore in that spot.

If the pieces refuse to join together, then that's when you know you have an actual gap between the surfaces, and there is actually a problem currently where surfaces created by Network use a somewhat looser accuracy and can sometimes be just outside of the join tolerance. If that happens you can get them to join by scaling them down first, see this message for some details:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3939.2

But don't get too worried just seeing some triangulation artifacts like in your screenshot there - those can show up even if the actual surfaces are 100% touching without the slightest gap between them, since the display is only done with a triangulated approximation of each of the true surfaces.

It can be a good idea to do the network with some longer curves instead of just piece-by-piece as well though - it will tend to make smoother results. If you do it in pieces you will end up with creases where the pieces meet because each piece has no knowledge of the adjacent ones. When you include more sections directly in the creation of a single surface it helps to make a smoother result.

See these previous posts for some illustrations on how creating a larger surface (or curve) can help with smoothness, as compared to doing it in smaller patches:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1398.18
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1398.19

- Michael

After trying many different ways of doing this I finally went back to the way I originally planned (but never tried for some reason). At any rate after some tweaking I think I am 95% of the way there. It's really rather simple to setup.

It's looking good!

Yeah, kind of the key thing I'd say is to temporarily ignore the notched out area and cut that out after building a somewhat more uniformly shaped piece.

- Michael

Really brilliant work - looks very good!

<<<Hi ugo

<<<> What rendering program are you using?

<<< Simlab Composer.

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<<< ~Danny~

There is a free free version : SimLab Composer Lite! (max 1920 *1080)
http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-products/simlab-composer-lite.aspx